


Goodnight, Dear Carlos, and Goodbye

by twistedthicket1



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-06 04:25:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1844341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedthicket1/pseuds/twistedthicket1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not many find the mysterious place that is Night Vale, and those that do are often seeking for something, or perhaps running away. Carlos is doing both. </p><p>Cecil has only ever known Night Vale really, and yet he knows that there is an outside, and that he may never leave his desert community. He has been there all of his life, all of his previous lives, and will continue to be there long after, The Voice of Night Vale. Yet he is unprepared when he finds himself in love with an outsider from town, and cannot quite reconcile the Human parts of him with the Inhuman as he finds himself inexplicably drawn to Carlos. </p><p>When the scientist digs too deep into Night Vale's secrets, uncovering dangerous truths, Cecil must decide: Will he do his duty? Can he? And most of all, can he justify his actions when it feels like they are not his own?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface- The Man Outside the Desert

**Author's Note:**

> so, this is my first jump into the Welcome To Night Vale fandom ^.^ so be gentle with me. I'm likely taking liberties with some aspects of the story, although I'm going to try hard to keep the characters as much like they are in the podcasts :) I'd appreciate knowing what you'd think! and if you like this and would like to follow me, my tumblr is: http://twistedthicket1.tumblr.com/
> 
> And now, dear readers, I hope you enjoy ^.^

 

 

 

_"A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep."- Episode 1 (Pilot)_

 

There were times when the desert seemed to swallow, consume everything in its path, and leave only distant memories behind. Memories that like the sand itself seemed to dissolve, tugged and pulled by the wind and kicked by the dust, swirling in eddies and vortex's that had no traceable pattern or association with one another. A man could get lost in the desert, if they tried. It was easy enough to do even if they weren't trying, and Carlos thought to himself that perhaps he was trying, very very deeply. Certainly, most would think his efforts were perhaps a bit overkill, what with the way he leapt to volunteer back at the lab, how he didn't even bother to pack much, leaving behind only an empty flat in noisy and chaotic Los Angeles. Those who did not know him well (and there were many who didn't) might have merely discounted it on the fact that such an offer wasn't made everyday, that there was so little _new_ to discover on Earth as it was, that so many had _tried_ before to find the elusive place he was now being sent to, and so little had returned. People who didn't know him, didn't know how his mind worked, would assume Carlos had been captured be the idea, the dream. Chasing the _wonder_ of discovery.

 

It would be an honest mistake after all, for another man might have volunteered to go on the expedition for such a reason. Carlos was sure many of his colleagues had, and he was sure that perhaps when all was said and done, such a reason wasn't a bad one. Yet the scientist, having seen the project and how those who had come back had been changed... knew there was no glory in being sent out to the desert, with little communication, and fewer chances of escape intact. He held no illusion, amongst scientific experiments, Project _#6959_ was by far the most mysterious, as well as the most dangerous.

 

In a way, it was the perfect disguise. For Carlos knew even as the guide helped him on the desert's edge off of the durable Jeep on which they'd arrived, knew even as his feet sunk into the first soft dunes of sand and bleached rock, that he was not chasing. No.

 

Carlos above all, was _running._

 

From what, well... perhaps it'd be incentive enough to find this place, this area.

Perhaps it would be enough to find a whisper amidst the swirling sand, the trembling and shifting ground, blasted gold ahead. A murmur, a moaning of _Night Vale._

 

****

“Goodnight, dear listeners, _good night._ ”

The smooth, low voice seemed to fill the homes of Night Vale, twisting and curling in an ear so as to lure the mind out to play, distract it with a hazy and indistinct flashing of colour and noise. Elusive, it loomed overhead as much as The Void did, swirling in complex patterns from the figure who leaned against the solid wooden desk and chair of his office and spoke. In the glow of the _On Air_ sign above his head, the young man appeared almost skeletal, pale white skin shimmering softly in the dark, illuminated as much by the pale violet eyes that flicked down from the microphone before him as the static-hum of the third eye that slid closed in rest for the night, centred on his forehead. It lingered for a moment longer, burning an imprint people's eyes if they were to see it, before fading into dark ink, a purple tattoo that hid behind a fringe of white-blonde hair. Underneath the strange man's pressed white collar, trailing down from sleeves that ended just above his elbow, more tattoos thrived, writhing and shifting for a moment in consideration before falling still. The hum of electricity filled the air, and the man, silently possessed by something inhuman, closed his human eyes gently, head tilting back and mouth falling open. His chair creaked in the silent dark with the movement, used to such treatment.

 

Cecil Palmer came back to himself in slow and juddering increments, life seeping back into his veins like a blackened tide as he straightened. The tall man flinched as tingles of feeling returned to his arms and legs, and his eyes reopened, no longer glowing but deepest violet in hue. He winced at the stiffness in his shoulders, popping the joints with a swing of his neck even as he stood, stretching with a contented sigh that left him in a relaxed rush. Another day, another show. To think, only one person died today, one poor victim who was foolish (mad) enough to try and brave the library. His own fault really, even if he had a history project due. In the reporter's opinion, such deaths were unfortunate, but not particularly tragic. But then, if he considered every death a tragedy, he could not be the town's _Voice._

 

And really dear listener, what then would Cecil _be_?

 

After all, the radio was what kept Cecil at a glance, human. Mortal enough that if one were to see him outside of his city (not that it would ever conceivably happen) they might just suspect albinism, or perhaps sickness. The lilting, dulcet tones of his voice, flowing over the town were what kept him sane, speaking of an insane world. One might think that Cecil was not aware of the outside world, of how it might see Night Vale, of how it could be perceived. Yet this was not entirely true. Everyone who had... “Positions” such as his knew. Were _aware._ It was simply not Cecil's _job_ to mind. To care about such matters.

 

For he was not one to guard, nor one to protect. No. Cecil's task was merely to _inform._ Like the others, he took his job seriously. So it was with the sun, a brilliant ball of gaseous energy setting overhead that the man came to be aware of in the distance, a licking whisper of something new. This new thing, sweeping over the desert even as Cecil made his way to his car, past the security guards (one of which tipped their antlered hat at him in farewell) shivered into the man's bones, a flash of heat that did not taste of the same sweltering temperatures to which he was so used to.

Cecil Palmer's murmur of “Oh, a visitor!” was whispered in the fading dregs of the sun, his smile curling, pointed. With the proclamation, the wind seemed to pick up, tugging playfully at his clothes, to which the reporter giggled. “Now, now. No need to get so excited! We don't even know their _name_ yet, silly!” His rich laugh only made the wind tug harder, and his pale eyes closed as he pictured it.

 

The man, standing on the edge of the desert. White lab coat. Dark skin. Darker hair, just long enough to curl delightfully below his ears. Silver dashes at the temple. In the man's eyes, _secrets._

 

“Oh, but he _will_ do well here in our little town, won't he?” The wind seemed to moan its agreement, and Cecil's eyes slipped open again as he braced his hands on his hips and mused “Still, others won't like him much. A shame, how handsome he is!”

Clasping his hands together, Cecil splayed them beneath his chin in thought. His voice was a purr of seduction. His question though innocent, lilted with something darker.

“But then, I don't suppose I truly care, now do I?”

 

The wind howled in response, and this time the reporter's grin was positively wicked.

“Oh, I know. I _know..._ ” He giggled to himself, coming to rest his hand against the sun-heated metal of his car in the parking lot. In the distance a citizen was chanting, muttering gibberish blackly into the oncoming night. The only other sound was the weather, rolling in from the east. Cecil's voice was filled with glee.

 

“The Secret Police will be having a field day.”

 


	2. The Visitor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to update one of my other stories first... but this one called to me :P 
> 
> I hope you enjoy! ^.^ slow beginning as usual for me....

 

 

_"A New man came into town today. Who is he? What does he want from us? Why his perfect and beautiful haircut? Why his perfect and beautiful coat?  He says he is a scientist. Well, we have all been scientists at one point or another in our lives. But why now? Why here?" _\- Episode 1 (Pilot)__

 

 

The man who had been hired to lead Carlos into the desert spoke the kind of broken English that he had grown up with at home as a boy, and it was strangely soothing to listen to as they trekked, sand ghosting softly over them with the wind and seeming to come to rest in every crevice and fold of clothing. Like breath against a mirror, dunes faded and changed shape before the scientist's eyes, and all the while he was told stories of the land, the man leading him an elderly character who went by the name of Daniel.

 

Daniel didn't seem to think much about the strange scientist who was following behind him, at least he chose not to ask questions. For this Carlos was grateful, and he listened as the elder spoke, mostly about the desert itself and its shape and breath. He spoke of worlds half made of baked sand and dreams, and stars that glowed above in the night sky like the dying flickers of a bonfire long after it had been left to snuff, and most importantly of a city that according to many maps and satellites could not feasibly exist.

 

Though the elderly man did not ask Carlos what his purpose was for coming to the arid wasteland in which they walked in, he could feel the question on Daniel's tongue, lingering behind meaningful looks under silvery brows and long stretches of silence. Carlos made no move to fill such stretches, walking behind, adjusting the wire frame of his glasses and thanking every God he knew that he had lenses that darkened with the sun. Though he smiled, made small talk and was polite, he did not disclose anything of relevance about himself.

 

Not that Daniel honestly expected him to.

After all, there were not many that asked him to take them into the desert that did not have something to hide. So he did not ask, and Carlos did not tell. Together, they wordlessly suspended their suspicions of one another, and the scientist in thanks did not question why occasionally Daniel's eyes drifted like they were staring at something unseen, and did not object when the old man stopped at the edge of a wizened desert canyon, gripped the walking stick he had used to support him until now more tightly in his hand, and stated firmly “This is as far as I go.”

 

The canyon below was dark, long and narrow and deep, and Carlos looked down at the bottomless abyss, and thought for a moment that something shivered over his skin tightly. A wind, kicking up from the dead desert air, coming from down below. At the edge of the canyon, a rope ladder that looked as ancient as it did solid and immoveable swayed, leading down below. Behind him Daniel watched keenly, dark eyes kind despite their nervousness as they flicked about.

“Your team comes in one week. I will bring them here. They might not all make it, though. Not everyone gets through. There's a tunnel at the bottom. Go through there, and if you're meant to... you'll find it.”

 

“That's fine.” Carlos' voice was soft, but he did not look away from the darkness before him. His hands were clenched at his side, and he seemed to sway at the edge of the sun-baked rock, watching the red stones as they shone like blood-streaked gold across on the other side. If he peered in the distance, Carlos thought he could imagine something, a shadow far, far away. Yet when he blinked like a mirage it vanished, and he soon looked back down into the darkness, gathering his resolve. His voice was like iron, steely and sure.

 

“Thank you.”

 

Daniel's weather-lined features were drawn as he replied frankly “Don't thank me yet, my friend. Even if you do find it, you might not be comfortable with _what_ or _who_ you'll become.”

 

“Who says I'll be changed?”

Carlos looked then to him, dark eyes unreadable. Still there was a challenge in his posture, a sturdiness in the line of his shoulders. A refusal to back down. The old man had seen it before, a spark of fascination, a desire to learn. Yet what _this place_ would teach this man, that still remained to be seen. Daniel's voice was distant, lost and wide and as encompassing as the sand itself.

 

“Can anyone really ever be the same when confronted with a world that is made up of something far beyond human understanding?”

 

“Nothing is beyond the understanding of science, if one only tries hard enough.”

Carlos' jaw clenched with the truth of his words, his sword and shield. Logic and science and numbers. Nothing couldn't be analysed, nothing couldn't be harvested for data. _Nothing_ in this world wasn't quantifiable. Yet the old man before him laughed, the sound long and rasped and thoroughly amused, and the scientist felt all of seven years old all of a sudden, playing with his father's clothes.

 

“You tell yourself that now _mi amigo,_ but you do not know how this place works...” Daniel gestured to the canyon, and his voice shook for a moment, bordering on fear. His voice was heavy, leaden with a kind of dread.

 

“You do not know _Night Vale._ The strangeness it holds.”

 

Carlos' smile was flinty. For a moment, he looked not unlike a wolf, tilting his head to the side. His expression was not unkind.

“Maybe so. But then again... Night Vale does not know _me._ ”

 

As he turned to the rope ladder, intending the conversation to be over and done, he thought he heard the old man mutter

“It doesn't _have to_... but soon it will.”

 

****

The ladder rungs were rugged wood under his palms, rough but strong, unyielding. Carlos took each one at a time, feeling out the next with his foot even as his bag weighed down his shoulders, feeling as though he were always a breath away from a free fall. Each step down caused the sky above him to shrink further and further away, and the walls of the canyon seemed to threaten to consume him. For a moment, the scientist let himself entertain the idea, the notion that the pit was endless, that no bottom would come. That he would wander deeper and deeper down the latter until there were no more rungs to be found, left to dangle in the dark and the secrets of the roan rock walls around him.

 

When his foot did touch ground again, it felt as if he'd been climbing down for a small eternity. As it was, the smooth sensation of the rock under his feet came as a surprise. Kneeling in the dark, Carlos' fingers ran themselves along the surface of the floor. Smooth, not a hint of a pock-mark or edged stone. As if the ground itself had been polished, time after time by unseen hands. A part of him recalled the stories his abuela used to tell him, of a man having to take his sandals off to walk on holy ground. The larger part of his thinking however noticed that despite the fact that there was little to no light, he could see.

 

Carlos could make out in the dimness an almost winding bend, stretching out in both directions on either side of him. This however wasn't what caught his attention. For in front of him, a little ways ahead at the other side of the canyon, the rock-face was carved, hollowed out to create a dome-shaped tunnel that seemed to lead into the stones of the canyon itself. The entrance to the tunnel bore no words, yet rune-shaped markings lined its outside, the pictures seeming to almost float free from the rock in such a way that Carlos found himself forced to blink, lest they shift and twist into some other shape before him. Walking warily forward, his footsteps echoed loudly in the silence of the canyon, the chill wind that had been breathing down the back of his neck seeming to emanate from the entrance of the tunnel before him. It blew back his dark curls, ruffled the tails of his flannel shirt, and with it the scientist almost imagined he could hear something soft and gentle, calling him.

 

Eerie, it caused goosebumps to line the skin of his arms. Despite himself, Carlos hesitated, pausing long enough to retrieve from his bag a flashlight. Its beam quivered in his hands, and when he flashed them over the runes, the scientist could just make out the shape of the largest one, right above the arch of the tunnel:

It looked a little like an eye.

 

With its stone likeness staring up at him, Carlos reached for his moleskine notebook, thumbing the blank pages apart until he could draw the rough outline of it in greased charcoal and a few of the others. Above all, he was here to research. Still, that didn't stop the feeling that the rune was watching him even as he stepped forward, nor did it quiet his shiverings as the wind seemed to pick up the closer he came, tugging him almost playfully towards the darkness and the unknown. Instead, Carlos thought he could feel its stare, following him even as the tunnel swallowed him like a gaping maw, protecting or perhaps hunting the back of his neck with a possessive hold even as his flashlight showed him the runes that lined the ceiling and the floor before him, and the wind called him onward.

 

It was only when said runes started to glow, a pale and shimmering silver hue, that Carlos began to wonder just what he had gotten himself into.

 

****

Cecil woke that evening as he usually did: brightly and cheerfully, hardly even letting it slow him down as gravity became unreliable as he was brushing his teeth, trusting it to settle down in due time. True to his trust, his feet soon returned to solid ground even as the lock slid home to his apartment, the turning over of the key an almost symbolic gesture even as his car (which had been tied down) touched the pavement again with a shuddering creak behind him.

 

The sun was already beginning to sink below the horizon as he got into the vehicle, and it washed his little desert community in a crimson paint that made the lone houses burn like pillars of fire. Like a licking across his spine, the pale man could feel the entirety of the town waiting for something, as if hovering on the edge of expectation. Though not everyone knew, many were aware that something new was coming. Something interesting. Like a thorn in a great animal's side, it niggled and twisted in Cecil's stomach, fluttering not unpleasantly like butterflies.

 

He smiled to himself, humming an absent tune even as he came to pull up to the radio show tower, the engine cutting with one swift turn of his key. He was overcome with a desire to _see_ , to _know_ , but such things would have to wait, halt until he connected.... until he was not quite in this form and yet not wholly in his other... Until he could listen to Night Vale and hear and interpret its sounds. It was somewhere around nine (If his clock wasn't lying to him again), it was almost time. Yet like an impatient child his fingers drummed on the steering wheel a moment longer, eyes dark and violet with fascination. He longed to know who was tracing the paths into his desert, into the land that was owned by many but ruled by precious few. He longed to know if this one would survive, would have what it _took_ to do so.

 

Above all, he longed to _touch,_ to reach out and feel something that was so alive, to stroke the heart that even now so far away pounded loud enough for him to hear. He long to make it bleed, even as he bled upon the bloodstone doors, his pocket-knife cutting efficiently into his palm amongst thousands of other crisscrossing scars as he uttered a soft chant into the desert air. Yet as he stood in the doorway, he caught out of the corner of his eye a shadow. A warning.

 

For one rule that Cecil knew, one law that he must obey despite his love of bending all creeds and codes, was that The Voice of Night Vale must remain impartial.

 

Though one might let it slide that he occasionally made sarcastic comments about the Sheriff's Secret Police, and one might not mind that he eluded to the treatment of he and his many (far too many, really) interns, it would go without saying that seeking out, _finding_ the newcomer, would most definitely upset the balance.

 

Yet even so, Cecil knew Josie's Angels would be out tonight, and they could tell him. Tell him who this little human was, tell him his name.

 

That in the end was what consoled him, causing him only to pout in response as the shadowed figure made their leave. When it came down to it, Cecil knew his place. Yet his smile grew again, curling as the tattoos on his skin writhed in amusement. Still, just because _he_ couldn't go to the newcomer... didn't mean he could stop it if the _newcomer_ came to _him._

 

So that night, if Cecil might have commented on what he saw of the man, might have described his beauty (which was not just flattery) or the strange and mysterious secrets surrounding his simple façade well...

 

He was still playing within the rules.

After all, it wasn't like it wasn't a feat in itself that this Carlos had made it in the first place.

Especially when one took into account that those who came to Night Vale and didn't disappear, tended to be just as strange as the people inhabiting it in the first place. Although at a glance this scientist did not appear strange...

Cecil figured all that was left to do was wait.

It was not his job to wonder, to muse. Such things were Forbidden. This, he knew. Had learned.... been trained into him countless times, when countless flaws before had come to reveal themselves of his character.

 

Wait, be patient...

And _see._

After all in a town without time, he had ages and years and months and minutes worth of free space. All of which could be devoted wholly and completely, to whatever interested him. And Carlos... well... Cecil was interested.  

 

 


End file.
